Page 43 of Chains of Recompense
Then I dragged myself in here, hoping the shower would strip the weakness out of me.
Instead, it’s making things worse.
Because now I’m seeing her every time I close my eyes—Aisling, five years ago, sliding into my lap at the bar, whispering in my ear that she’s ready for me to show her God once more. Aisling, yesterday, eyes defiant, lips trembling when I kissed her at the altar.
Aisling, this morning, warm and soft and damningly perfect in my arms.
And beneath all of it—lurking like a graveside oath—is Genevieve’s face.
Her smile.
Her voice.
Her blood on my hands.
I press the heel of my palm hard against my sternum because the ache there is spreading outward, anger and grief and something uglier, something I don’t want to name consuming me—lust tangled with memory.
Cazzo.
I brace a hand on the tile and wrap the other around my cock—already stiff and aching from the intrusive thoughts.
For a moment, I shut my eyes and picture Genevieve.
She’s familiar, safe, honest.
She gave herself to me willingly—every part of her, without question. She was simple and sweet and understanding.
And though my father hated that I chose to marry one of the girls who worked at our family’s club, she never hid her profession from me.
She never tried to be anything other than exactly what she was.
She gave all of herself to me, then she chose me over the income she had so desperately relied upon.
She was the one thing that was trulymine, the only decision I made just for me.
And she was stolen from me.
I stroke myself, trying to conjure her face, her body beneath mine, that kind smile that used to settle the restless rebelliousness inside me.
But the second my pulse kicks—my brain betrays me.
It’s not Genevieve beneath me.
It’s Aisling, hair wild, azure eyes molten, pouting red lips parted in sensual bliss, her nails dragging down my back, pulling me closer, demanding more. Her voice, breathless as she moans, “Raf—harder?—”
I growl and pump faster, furious with myself as I try to wrench the memory back to Genevieve, but it slips, replaced by another vision of Aisling five years ago, her back arching as I fucked her against the cold glass wall of Portentia’s penthouse suite, her teeth sinking into my shoulder to keep from screaming.
My whole body shudders as I come dangerously close to losing myself to the memory.
“No,” I mutter, gritting my teeth, forcing the stroke into something controlled, punishing.
Genevieve. Barcelona. Her fingers tangled in mine.
Not Aisling.
Not the girl I sent away.
Not the girl who returned to me wrapped in silk and venom to marry me for politics.
